After a lacklustre season, the Lacombe Senior AA Dodgers hit it out of the park in the finals.
The Dodgers initially defeated Red Deer to advance to the finals. They played their final game on Sept. 7, winning against the undefeated Innisfail Trappers in the best-of-three league championship. The score was 6-2.
“To be honest, I think we were kind of disappointed the way regular season went,” said Andre Touchette, a second base player for the team. “We were lucky enough to be given the opportunity in the playoffs and the guys really stepped up. You could tell there was a little different feeling when it came to playoffs – people were really into it.”
The season was delayed this year due to COVID-19 restrictions. The season started when the province entered Phase 2 of the re-opening, which meant that the Dodgers didn’t play their first game until July. Altogether, they were delayed two months.
Touchette said the delayed season may have impacted their initial performance. “We were able to get the same amount of games as last year, just in a more compact season. That kind of eliminated practices too so, that’s maybe why we had such a slow start in the regular season.”
Besides the delayed start, COVID restrictions didn’t really affect the team.
“I mean we had to follow a few more procedures to make sure we weren’t sharing equipment. You social distance as much as you can, but we were still in the dugout (together),” said Touchette. “It was kind of put on the guys to be responsible. If anyone was sick, they wouldn’t come out.”
Touchette isn’t certain about what next season will bring the team
“We’ll re-evaluate probably in April again and see what’s happening in the community and if the seasons going to start or if it’s going to be a late one again,” he said.
Despite the uncertainty and the slow start, Touchette is happy with how the season ended.
“It just all came together in the playoffs. We got hot at the right time and yeah, we were able to win it all.”